“I meet people all the time with my canes,” said Brett Elliott, woodcarving artist from Fallston.

For years, he has hand-carved unique canes that feature anything from giraffes to angels to a self portrait. Elliott started making canes when he was out walking one day. He said he saw a piece of wood on the ground and thought it resembled a snake, so he cut it off the tree. Then he found a real snake.

“I picked up the snake and looked at all the details of it. So the next day I started on it,” he said. “I drew out what I wanted to do. I used oil paints and colored it up. I thought, you know that wasn’t hard.”

Not long after, he found another piece of wood.

“I said that looks like a rhinoceros. It just jumped out at me,” said Elliott.

He usually numbers his canes, but he’s given away some that weren’t numbered. He said when he used to give them away, people didn’t appreciate them as much.

“But when I started selling them, people thought more of them,” he said.

It can take Elliott anywhere from 40 to 200 hours to make a cane. He doesn’t have a shop, but he sells the canes to people who see him out walking and ask to buy them. Most of his canes feature animals in motion, like the one with a frog at the top and a snake climbing the cane, as if the snake is chasing the frog.

“Motion draws people,” he said. “I love to put motion in everything that I do.”

Another cane features a quail in flight, and another shows a lion catching a gazelle.

Variety of arts talents

Elliott doesn’t stop at making canes though.

“I love doing woodwork of all kinds. I make ocarinas,” he said. “I have people ask me to play at funerals, parties, bonfires."

Elliott can’t read music, but he learned by ear.

“I just heard a guy playing one at the mall and I bought one,” he said.

When he first started, he couldn’t play very well. So he put the instrument down, only to pick it up again 10 years later.

“And suddenly, I could play it,” he said.

He also does a bit of writing. He has finished a story about two little boys called “Scream of the Bobcat” or “Adventure on Buffalo Creek.”

“That’s just another thing I like to do,” he said. “I’m trying to write one about a spaceship.”

'It opens the world to them'

His other passion is photography.

“I have a gallery of pictures on National Geographic’s website,” said Elliott, whose camera of choice is a Fuji.

The brand isn’t the most expensive, but as he said, “it’s not the camera; it’s the photographer.”

Photography lets people see the world more, according to Elliott.

“You give a kid a good camera and it opens the world to them,” he said.

His photography subjects include fireworks, birds, sunsets, butterflies and other insects, especially spiders.

“I love taking pictures of spiders,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot of different things. It’s just amazing the things I get to see. Every once in a while you catch something that you didn’t know was going to happen.”

Historical collection

Another hobby of Elliott's is collecting arrowheads.

The first time he found one, he took it to the Schiele Museum in Gastonia. They found the arrowhead was more than 2,000 years old. He has since collected a box full of them. Some are 7,000 years old. One is 11,000 years old.

“And it’s all just laying on top of the ground,” he said. “You just have to open your eyes.”

Elliott said the place where he usually hunts arrowheads was probably the site where the toolmakers created them. It’s also on the North Carolina registry of Native American sites. He said there is a 50-yard circle around the area, lined at the edges with rocks, where the Indian children would throw away the scraps for the toolmakers.

“I would love to have been an archaeologist,” he said.

But he is content with his life just as it is. In 2002, he was diagnosed with primary progressive MS.

"That’s why I have to use a cane," he said.

Yet he sees no reason to be down.

"Life is life. You take what comes and you do the best you can with it," he said. "My life is so rich. Why be down? Life is full."